Death Was Scary Then

I don’t want to be put into a box and embalmed with chemicals that won’t let me become the earth. I hope someone who is not scared of death – someone who can feel their own ground and aliveness – will be brave and stay with me for a while, just until I am cold and gone. Then they can put me in the earth until my bones become dust.

When I was young my Mother died.

Recently I had an experience with a little bird that made me think about it. I wish I had known how to be grounded and present then.

Today I held a dead bird in the palm of my hand. The cat bought it in to me. I picked it up and gently held it.

At first I hoped it would come to life, maybe it was feigning death to protect itself. I moved my hand so it could feel the sun -maybe that would help. I tried to will it back to life.

It felt very sacred. I could feel the life in my hand and hoped the bird could feel it too.

I remembered my Mother dying when I was young and wished I would have touched her body – like I was with the bird – while it was still warm. I wished I hadn’t wanted to get away quickly. I wished I had put my head on her heart and my hand on her face. I wish I had of loved her more. Death was scarier then.

I stayed with the bird and all that was happening in this moment – my memory of my Mother’s death, the birds death, my aliveness and the aliveness I could hear and feel all around me.

I remembered them coming and putting coins on her eyes. That was weird. I didn’t like that. Why couldn’t we look at her eyes. The birds eyes were beautiful to look at. But death was scary then.

The cat walked past. I wanted to be mad at it. Then I thought, well, it just did what it naturally does. Just like the cancer did in my Mum. I gently put the bird in the garden and remembered its bones will turn into dust and then it will be the earth.

I don’t want to be put into a box and embalmed with chemicals that won’t let me become the earth. I hope someone who is not scared of death – someone who can feel their own ground and aliveness – will be brave and stay with me for a while, just until I am cold and gone. Then they can put me in the earth until my bones become dust.

Then I will be the earth too.

I am sorry Mum x.

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Breaking the Spell of Suffering

Before I know it I have lost myself, I am not solid.

I am hard on myself and I need to break the spell of that.

When the overwhelm sets in, it takes over my body.

Before I know it I have lost myself, I am not solid.

I am like a leaf being blown around in a storm.

I am lost. I have no home base.

When I can break the spell of the panic, the overwhelm, the negative thoughts – I feel wider, softer.  I have freedom to move.

The reward from doing that is that I can hear the birdsong and the wind in the trees.

I am available to experiencing life in the here and now.

How I break it is to pause, to slow down, to remember to come back to myself, my surroundings, my breath, the beauty that is there for me as a solid support – 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks of every year.

Not as a technique that I have learned and must get right, must do a certain way. If I do that, I am going against the unique way my body knows and desires to be.

If I do that, then the trying hard sets in, the sense of failure, I don’t get it, can’t do it.

The words come in and beat me up.

I must pause and find some sense of solidity that is outside me.

I simply pause and wait for the right way for me that is coming from my own unique bodily knowing of how to be in this world.

Finally – I can trust me.

I can break the spell like that and then the magic of the birdsong will appear for me, and I can breathe out.

Because I can trust me and my body knowing of what it needs,

I can trust you and your body knowing.

I know you will find your own unique way that is just right for you.

Thank you Kevin.

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Pauses Big and Small

This past week I had my first class with Addie van der Kooy and Cecilia Clegg called “Practicing Presence.”   I came away from that workshop with some homework—pause and find your grounded presence whenever you can even if you are just waiting for the kettle to boil.  The experience of these pauses helped me learn so much about myself.

One task I needed to do was to put together my bookcases that I had dismantled when the painters came to freshen up my apartment. For months I’ve been promising myself I would make some sense out of the mess so I could actually find a book I might want.

I began sorting my books into piles. I paused to be with all the categories looking for meaning.  The first thing I noticed was how many journals I had.  Even though writers are supposed to be people who wrote in journals all their lives, I never thought of myself as a journal writer.  I found 11 full journals.  Who knew?  They are mostly from extended trips abroad and times of strife.  This was the first big pause.  I stopped to sense into “Who was this person who wrote in journals and what did she write about?”  There were texts of prose, letters to angels, dreams, schedules, poetry and many different types of art—painting, drawing, collage, and textile design.

I paused with each journal in my hands.  I found the text below in a journal I had written when I was struggling with cancer and my relationship with my mother.

The Rage Temple has Gone out of Business

You have rage that’s too dangerous to express?
Open up an account with me. 
Just tell me your problem
And I’ll deposit it in my body.

And when my body explodes with rage
We are sorry.
Now these Temple doors are closed for good.
How long will it take to empty the inventory?

I had these journals. I never read them. I didn’t remember writing them.  I didn’t remember me.  A pause changed that.  The pause got me to open the journals and remember the me who wrote them.

The next pause helped me notice what books I have been reading.  There were a large number of books about all sorts of energy healing, diet, health, wellness, etc. There’s a considerable number of books about Focusing and WBF.  There are also books about Reiki, Flower Essence Therapy and Homeopathy.  These are all practices that are now as normal to me as breathing.  I paused with the books and I sensed how I loved learning about these modalities and how they have saved me and helped me move toward my highest and greatest good.

The next pause that came was around artistic endeavors. There are books on crochet, drawing, creating Flash cartoons, dance, poetry, and feminist literary criticism.  As I was putting some odd books away, I paused again.  Where should I put my bound copy of the Master’s thesis?  It is study of two Spanish women writers who wrote about breaking free, or not, of their patriarchal limitations. They do this through writing self-begetting novels about women who read Fascist romance novels as children and are trying to create new structures for novels about women’s lives. It suddenly occurred to me that my thesis should go with the other books of feminist literary criticism.  Some of these books were quoted in my work.  Rather than being just an activity that I did to graduate, I could understand now that this work is a companion to the other books of feminist literary criticism that I had.

Each time I paused, I felt more like myself.  I felt more appreciation for who I am, the struggles I’ve survived and the beauty I created along the way.   This is an appreciation I had never felt before because I was always too busy trying to change myself to be something or someone “better.”  Instead, I now know that this treasure trove of information about me is readily available and that whenever I pause and hold space with equal regard for what is there, something new about me will emerge.

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Find Your Favorite Intunements!

For those who would like to use the Audio Guiding Suggestions/Intunements that Kevin has provided to the blog for their practice,  here is an easy way to find them on the blog.  Below you will find an index of the three albums of intunements that are available.  The three albums have different themes:

  1. First Intunements is for anyone who wants to start or become more proficient at Wholebody Focusing;
  2. Coming Home is for anyone who has some basic understanding of Wholebody Focusing and wants to deepen their practice; and
  3. Exploring the Unexplored is for anyone who wants to extend their practice in ways that they may not have yet experienced.

These Audio Guiding Suggestions/Intunements are here for your free use and enjoyment.  Our greatest wish is that they bring healing into the lives the people who listen to them.

Please find the Audio Guiding Suggestion/Intunement you are interested in below. This list will be on the home page for three days.

After a new blog appears on the home page,  you will be able to:

  • Use the  “Search by Theme” menu and click on “Audio Guiding Suggestions/Intunements.” This index will be the first page that comes up.  Just click on the links on this page and it will get you to the intunement  for which you are searching.
  • You can also access this list on the Home Page menu option “Audio Guiding Suggestions/Intunements Index.”  Once again, click on the name of the intunement, it will take you to the page where you will find it.

Below is a list by album of all the intunements.

First Intunements Cover

Painting by Kevin McEvenue

First Intunements

Beginning Intunement
Intunement # 1 Finding Me
Intunement # 2 We Need a Physical Connection to Find Me
Intunement # 3 What Feels Alive in Me Right Now?
Intunement # 4 Gravity: Accepting Life Itself Unconditionally
Intunement #5 Tuning into a Direct Experience Awakens a Connection with the Embodied Self
Intunement # 6 To Feel Good about Myself is Desirable
Intunement # 7 The Experience of Something that has a Consciousness all its Own!
Intunement # 8 Finding a Safe Structure to Experience Life Fully Inside Me as Me!
Intunement # 9 Explore the Power of Listening Silently to the Alive, a Force, in side of all of us!
Intunement # 10 From a Solid Base of Me Here I ask, “What is going on in Me Right Now?”
Intunement # 11 Looking for the Life Support to Move Forward the Complexity of a Growing Me?
Intunement # 12 Meet that Inner Power in each of US: It Knows How to Put us Together Again!

 

Coming Home LayersPainting by Kevin McEvenue

Coming Home – Intunements to Deepen your Practice

Intunement # 13 Something in Me Hurts!
Intunement # 14 The Felt Sense of What Feels Alive and the More that Emerges from that Alive
Intunement # 15 Asking, What is There in Me? Just Noticing the Different Body Responses!
Intunement # 16 A Shared Body to Body Listening & Understanding Beyond Trying to Think
Intunement # 17 An Active Meditation to Welcome What Wants to Present Itself for your Attention
Intunement # 18 Me & Planet Earth That Sustains Me & More
Intunement # 19 Life just ‘Moves’. Just ‘IS’. That is what it is to say ‘I Am’!
Intunement # 20 An Active Meditation to Invite a Question: “What is Alive in Me Right Now?”
Intunement # 21 Holding Both with Equal Positive Regard!
Intunement # 22 An Inner-Directed Experience
Intunement # 23 Active Meditation with the Breathing Self as “Me Here!”
Intunement # 24 The Power to Pause and Wait For!

Explore 3

Photo Credit: Michael Lux – Mohonk Preserve

Exploring the Unexplored

Intunement # 25 Felt Sense Naming and Reflecting a Body Experience
Intunement # 26 Coming Home to Me Again
Intunement # 27 The Arm Raising Exercise
Intunement # 28 A New Way to be with Pain
Intunement # 29 The Basic Elements of Wholebody Focusing and the Not Knowing
Intunement # 30 Active Meditation to Inform Me about Me
Intunement # 31 Listen to the Warm
Intunement # 32 To Discern & Unpack What is There
Intunement # 33 What do I do When Something Feels Right?
Intunement # 34 Something Is Not Right!
Intunement # 35 Asking for Help!
Intunement # 36 Who Am I?
Intunement # 37 Asking: Who Are You?

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You Have Appeared!

It’s beginning to sink in—that I can form a relationship—a WE—with something in me.  I’d been sitting with certain troubling sensations and thoughts recently and had begun to understand this more deeply.

I woke up the other morning with an uncomfortably dry mouth and it came to me:  I can sit-with this!  I’d been wishing this dry throat situation away for years, and now saw that I’d been missing an opportunity to be-with-it.

What follows below is what I wrote while it was happening. Two short sentences came to me.  I sat up and wrote them.  And then kept writing.

*******************************

“I don’t look to you to disappear. I look to you to appear.”

I said/thought this to that place in me that is dry—thirsty to the point of having no more resources, completely dry and without what she desperately needs.

Continue reading “You Have Appeared!”

The Power to Pause and Wait For!

This intunement is the last one in the “Coming Home” series of intunements that is the simplest and most gentle guide to grounded presence.  All that is needed is a desire to be with Kevin in grounded presence.  It is also a transition to the next series of intunements that support a deep level of being with all that is present in our lives.  Being able to pause is essential to being able to hold whatever comes. The pause allows these parts to find their own way home when they are ready.

Repeated use of this intunement can lead to the deeper sense of self that supports our ability to observe and hold, with equal regard, all our felt senses and body wisdom that emerge.

This intunement is especially suited to those of us who have learned to live our lives moving ahead at all cost without enough time for reflection or observation of what is there for us.  This intunement can be bookmarked on your computer and/or mobile devices in order to be easily available whenever there is a need to pause with a guiding voice as support for us to connect to our own “Me Here Now.”

Diana Scalera

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